Murder Takes a Holiday

by Various

  ‘Miss Shuler died on the thirteenth, leaving thirty thousand pounds to Crofton, if he survived her, or if he did not, then to Mrs Crofton. The important question then was whether Crofton was alive or dead; and if he was dead, whether he had died before or after the thirteenth. For if he died before the thirteenth the legacy went to Mrs Crofton, but if he died after that date the legacy went to Jobson.

  ‘Then you showed me that extraordinarily opportune letter dated the sixteenth. Now, seeing that that date was worth thirty thousand pounds to Jobson, I naturally scrutinised it narrowly. The letter was written with ordinary blue-black ink. But this ink, even in the open, takes about a fortnight to blacken completely. In a closed envelope it takes considerably longer. On examining this date through a lens, the one was very perceptibly bluer than the six. It had therefore been added later. But for what reason? And by whom?

  ‘The only possible reason was that Crofton was dead and had died before the thirteenth. The only person who had any motive for making the alteration was Jobson. Therefore, when we started for Seasalter I already felt sure that Crofton was dead and that the letter had been posted at Margate by Jobson. I had further no doubt that Crofton’s body was concealed somewhere on the premises of the bungalow. All that I had to do was to verify those conclusions.’

  ‘Then you believe that Jobson has told us the truth?’

  ‘Yes. But I suspect that he went down there with the deliberate intention of making away with Crofton before he could make a fresh will. The finding of Crofton’s body must have been a fearful disappointment, but I must admit that he showed considerable resource in dealing with the situation; and he failed only by the merest chance. I think his defence against the murder charge will be admitted; but, of course, it will involve a plea of guilty to the charge of fraud in connection with the legacy.’

  Thorndyke’s forecast turned out to be correct. Jobson was acquitted of the murder of Arthur Crofton, but is at present ‘doing time’ in respect of the forged letter and the rest of his too-ingenious scheme.

  A Case in Camera

  Edmund Crispin

  Detective Inspector Humbleby, of New Scotland Yard, had been induced by his wife to spend the first week of his summer’s leave with his wife’s sister, and his wife’s sister’s husband, in Munsingham, and was correspondingly aggrieved.

  Munsingham, large and sooty, seemed to him not at all the place for recreation and jollity; moreover, his wife’s sister’s husband, by name Pollitt, was, like himself, a policeman, being superintendent of the Munsingham City CID, so that inevitably shop would be talked.

  On the second day of the visit, however, Humbleby’s grievances were erased from his mind by the revelation of a serious crisis in his brother-in-law’s affairs.

  ‘I’m going to be retired,’ said Pollitt abruptly that evening, over tankards in the pub. ‘I haven’t got round to telling Marion about it yet.’

  Humbleby was staring at him in amazement. ‘Retired? But you’re not nearly at retirement age yet. Why on earth—’

  ‘Because I’ve got across the chief constable,’ said Pollitt. ‘He wanted a case to be considered closed – with perfectly good reason, I must say – and I wanted it kept open. I did keep it open, too, for a week or so – against his orders. Several of my men were tied up with it when they ought to have been doing other things.

  ‘I didn’t have the least excuse. I was going on instinct, and the fact that a couple of witnesses were just a bit too consistent in their stories to be true ... If I did possess definite evidence that the facts in this case aren’t what they seem, I could put it up to the Watch Committee, and I’m pretty sure they’d uphold me. In fact, it wouldn’t come to that; the CC’d withdraw. But definite evidence is just what’s lacking – so ...’ And Pollitt shrugged resignedly.

  ‘M’m,’ said Humbleby. ‘Just what is this case?’

  ‘Well, if you don’t mind coming along to my office tomorrow morning, and having a look at the dossier ...’

  And the basic facts of the case, Humbleby found, were in themselves simple enough.

  A month previously, on 27 June, between 10:30 and 11:00 in the morning (the evidence as to these times being positive and irrefragable), a fifty-year-old woman, a Mrs Whittington, had been murdered in the kitchen of her home on the outskirts of the town.

  The weapon – a heavy iron poker, with which Mrs Whittington had been struck violently on the back of the head – was found, wiped clean of fingerprints, nearby. The back door was open, and it was evident that the murder had followed, or been followed by, a certain amount of pilfering.

  Mrs Whittington’s husband, Leslie Whittington, a man younger and a good deal better-looking than his wife, held the post of chief engineer in the machinetool manufacturing firm of Heathers and Bardgett, whose factory was some ten minutes’ walk from the Whittington home.

  On the morning in question Whittington had been, as usual on weekdays, in his office at the factory. And the only respect in which, from his point of view, this particular morning had differed from any other was that he had been visited by a reporter, a girl, who worked for the most important of the Munsingham local newspapers. This girl, by name Sheila Pratt, was doing a series on the managers and technicians of Munsingham industry, and Whittington, an important man in his line, represented her current assignment.

  She had arrived at Whittington’s office shortly before 10:30 and had left again three-quarters of an hour later. During this period Whittington’s secretary had, on Whittington’s own instructions, told callers, and people who telephoned, that Whittington was out, thereby ensuring that the interview remained undisturbed.

  Moreover, there was a fire-escape running down past Whittington’s office window to a little-frequented yard.

  As a matter of course, Pollitt had set in train the routine of investigating whether some previous association could have existed between Whittington and Sheila Pratt. Their own assertion was that until the interview they had been complete strangers to one another; but Mrs Whittington, Pollitt had learned, was not the divorcing sort – and the pilfering could easily have been a blind.

  Before any results could be obtained from this investigation, however, there had occurred that development which had resulted in the chief constable’s ordering the file on the case to be closed. Two days after the murder, a notorious young thug called Miller was run over and killed by a lorry on the by-pass road, and in his pocket were found several small pieces of jewellery looted from Mrs Whittington’s bedroom at the time of her death.

  ‘There were witnesses, too,’ said Pollitt, ‘who’d seen Miller hanging about near the Whittington house on the morning Mrs W was done in. So it was reasonable enough to put the blame on him, and just leave it at that. Of course, Miller could quite well have come along and pinched the stuff after the murder was committed, but the CC thought that in the absence of any evidence against the husband that was stretching it a bit far, and one sees his point of view.’

  ‘One does,’ Humbleby agreed. ‘And I must admit, Charlie, that at the moment I still don’t quite see yours.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Pollitt, disgruntled. ‘But I still maintain that those two – Whittington and the Pratt girl – had their story far too pat. I took them both through it several times – separately, and with all sorts of camouflage stuff about unimportant detail – and neither of them ever put a foot wrong. Look.’ He thrust a sheaf of typescript at Humbleby. ‘Here are their various statements. You have a look at them.’

  ‘M’m,’ said Humbleby, nearly an hour later. ‘Yes ... Look, Charlie, the girl’s statements all contain stuff about the camera she brought with her to the interview. “Tripod ... three seconds’ exposure” – all that. Do you happen to have copies of the pictures she took?’

  ‘She only kept one,’ said Pollitt. ‘But I’ve got a blow-up print of that, all right.’ He produced it and handed it across. ‘It’s a good picture, isn’t it?’

  It was unusually sharp and clear
, showing Whittington at his desk with the desk clock very properly registering ten minutes to eleven.

  ‘But there’s nothing in it that’s any help, that I can see,’ Pollitt went on. ‘The clothes are right. The—’

  ‘Just a minute,’ Humbleby interrupted sharply. He had reverted from the photograph to the signed statements of Sheila Pratt, and was frowning in perplexity. ‘It’s possible that – I say, Charlie, is this girl an experienced photographer – a professional, I mean?’

  Pollitt shook his head. ‘No, she’s just a beginner. I understand she’s only bought her camera quite recently. But why—’

  ‘And this factory,’ said Humbleby. ‘Is there a lot of heavy machinery? A lot of noise and vibration?’

  ‘Yes, there is. What are you getting at?’

  ‘A couple more questions and you’ll see it for yourself. Is Whittington’s office somewhere over the factory? Can you feel the vibration there?’

  ‘You can. But I still don’t understand—’

  ‘You will, Charlie. Because here’s the really critical query. Were those machines running continuously during the whole of the time Sheila Pratt was in Whittington’s office?’

  And with that, Pollitt realised. ‘Tripod,’ he muttered. Then his voice rose. ‘Time-exposure ... Wait.’ He grabbed the telephone, asked for a number, asked for a name, put his question, listened, thanked his informant, and rang off. ‘Yes, they were running,’ he said triumphantly. ‘They were running all right.’

  And Humbleby chuckled. He flicked the photograph with his forefinger. ‘So that very obviously this beautifully clear picture wasn’t taken at the time when Sheila Pratt and Whittington allege it was taken – because tripod plus time-exposure plus vibration would inevitably have resulted in blurring ... I imagine they must have faked it up one evening, after the factory had stopped work; and the girl was too inexperienced in photography to realise the difference that that would make in the finished product ...’

  ‘Well, Charlie, will your chief like it, do you think?’

  Pollitt grinned. ‘He won’t like it at all. But give the devil his due, he’ll swallow it all right.’ He hesitated. ‘So that solves my own personal problem – and I needn’t tell you how grateful I am ... But as to whether we can get a prosecution out of it—’

  They never did. ‘And really, it was a good thing,’ said Pollitt two years later in London, when he and his wife were returning the Humblebys’ visit, and the conversation had turned to the topic of Whittington and his fate. ‘Because if the DPP had allowed it to be taken to court, the chances are he’d have been acquitted in spite of the lies and in spite of the information we dug out about the surreptitious meetings between him and the Pratt girl in the eighteen months before the murder.

  ‘And if he had been acquitted – well, he wouldn’t have needed to worry about the possibility of his new wife giving him away, would he? And he wouldn’t have set about stopping her mouth in that clumsy, panicky fashion ...’

  ‘And they wouldn’t be hanging him for it at Pentonville at nine o’clock tomorrow morning ... What a bit of luck, eh?’

  The Fever Tree

  Ritth Rendell

  Where malaria is, there grows the fever tree.

  It has the feathery fern-like leaves, fresh green and tender, that are common to so many trees in tropical regions. Its shape is graceful with an air of youth, of immaturity, as if every fever tree is waiting to grow up. But the most distinctive thing about it is the colour of its bark, which is the yellow of an unripe lemon. The fever trees stand out from among the rest because of their slender yellow trunks.

  Ford knew what the tree was called and he could recognise it but he didn’t know what its botanical name was. Nor had he ever heard why it was called the fever tree, whether the tribesmen used its leaves or bark or fruit as a specific against malaria or if it simply took its name from its warning presence wherever the malaria-carrying mosquito was. The sight of it in Ntsukunyane seemed to promote a fever in his blood.

  An African in khaki shorts and shirt lifted up the bar for them so that their car could pass through the opening in the wire fence. Inside it looked no different from outside, the same bush, still, silent, unstirred by wind, stretching away on either side. Ford, driving the two miles along the tarmac road to the reception hut, thought of how it would be if he turned his head and saw Marguerite in the passenger seat beside him. It was an illusion he dared not have and was allowed to keep for perhaps a minute. Tricia shattered it. She began to belabour him with schoolgirl questions, uttered in a bright and desperate voice.

  Another African, in a fancier, more decorated uniform, took their booking voucher and checked it against a ledger. You had to pay weeks in advance for the privilege of staying here. Ford had booked the day after he had said goodbye to Marguerite and returned, for ever, to Tricia.

  ‘My wife wants to know the area of Ntsukunyane,’ he said.

  ‘Four million acres.’

  Ford gave the appropriate whistle. ‘Do we have a chance of seeing leopard?’

  The man shrugged, smiled. ‘Who knows? You may be lucky. You’re here a whole week, so you should see lion, elephant, hippo, cheetah maybe. But the leopard is nocturnal and you must be back in camp by six p.m.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I advise you to get on now, sir, if you’re to make Thaba before they close the gates.’

  Ford got back into the car. It was nearly four. The sun of Africa, a living presence, a personal god, burned through a net of haze. There was no wind. Tricia, in a pale yellow sun dress with frills, had hung her arm outside the open window and the fair downy skin was glowing red. He told her what the man had said and he told her about the notice pinned inside the hut: It is strictly forbidden to bring firearms into the game reserve, to feed the animals, to exceed the speed limit, to litter.

  ‘And most of all you mustn’t get out of the car,’ said Ford.

  ‘What, not ever?’ said Tricia, making her pale blue eyes round and naive and marble-like.

  ‘That’s what it says.’

  She pulled a face. ‘Silly old rules!’

  ‘They have to have them,’ he said.

  In here as in the outside world. It is strictly forbidden to fall in love, to love your wife, to try and begin anew. He glanced at Tricia to see if the same thoughts were passing through her mind. Her face wore its arch expression, winsome.

  ‘A prize,’ she said, ‘for the first one to see an animal.’

  ‘All right.’ He had agreed to this reconciliation, to bring her on this holiday, this second honeymoon, and now he must try. He must work at it. It wasn’t just going to happen as love had sprung between him and Marguerite, unsought and untried for. ‘Who’s going to award it?’ he said.

  ‘You are if it’s me and I am if it’s you. And if it’s me I’d like a presey from the camp shop. A very nice pricey presey.’

  Ford was the winner. He saw a single zebra come out from among the thorn trees on the right-hand side, then a small herd.

  ‘Do I get a present from the shop?’ he asked.

  He could sense rather than see her shake her head with calculated coyness. ‘A kiss,’ she said and pressed warm dry lips against his cheek.

  It made him shiver a little. He slowed down for the zebra to cross the road. The thorn bushes had spines on them two inches long. By the roadside grew a species of wild zinnia with tiny flowers, coral red, and these made red drifts among the coarse pale grass. In the bush were red ant hills with tall peaks like towers on a castle in a fairy story. It was thirty miles to Thaba.

  He drove on just within the speed limit, ignoring Tricia as far as he could whenever she asked him to slow down. They weren’t going to see one of the big predators, anyway, not this afternoon, he was certain of that, only impala and zebra and maybe a giraffe. On business trips in the past he’d taken time off to go to Serengeti and Kruger and he knew.

  He got the binoculars out for Tricia and adjusted them and hooked them round her neck, for he hadn’t fo
rgotten the binoculars and cameras she had dropped and smashed in the past through failing to do that, and her tears afterwards. The car wasn’t air-conditioned and the heat lay heavy and still between them. Ahead of them, as they drove westwards, the sun was sinking in a dull yellow glare. The sweat flowed out of Ford’s armpits and between his shoulder blades, soaking his already wet shirt and laying a cold sticky film on his skin.

  A stone pyramid with arrows on it, set in the middle of a junction of roads, pointed the way to Thaba, to the main camp at Waka-suthu and to Hippo Bridge over the Suthu River. On top of it a baboon sat with her grey fluffy infant on her knees. Tricia yearned for it, stretching out her arms. She had never had a child. The baboon began picking fleas out of its baby’s scalp. Tricia gave a little nervous scream, half disgusted, half joyful. Ford drove down the road to Thaba and in through the entrance to the camp ten minutes before they closed the gates for the night.

  The dark comes down fast in Africa. Dusk is of short duration and no sooner have you noticed it than it is gone and night has fallen. In the few moments of dusk pale things glimmer brightly and birds murmur. In the camp at Thaba were a restaurant and a shop, round huts with thatched roofs, and wooden chalets with porches. Ford and Tricia had been assigned a chalet on the northern perimeter, and from their porch, across an expanse of turf and beyond the high wire fence, you could see the Suthu River flowing smoothly and silently between banks of tall reeds.

  Dusk had just come as they walked up the wooden steps, Ford carrying their cases. It was then that he saw the fever trees, two of them, their ferny leaves bleached to grey by the twilight but their trunks a sharper, stronger yellow than in the day.

  ‘Just as well we took our anti-malaria pills,’ said Ford as he pushed open the door. When the light was switched on he could see two mosquitos on the opposite wall. ‘Anopheles is the malaria carrier, but unfortunately they don’t announce whether they’re anopheles or not.’